1. Field of the invention
The invention relates to a centralized computer system, i.e., so called blade PC system, and, more particularly, to a centralized computer system capable of automatically detecting the current status of the hosts and/or the I/O peripherals by programming design.
2. Description of the prior art
Many commercial businesses and enterprises make extensive use of personal computers (PCs) in their daily operations. Typically, each user of a PC in the enterprise has a networked PC at his/her desk or work area. As the number of networked computer systems utilized in an enterprise increases, the management of resources in the network may become increasingly complex and expensive.
Referring to FIG. 1, FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram illustrating an infrastructure of a typical centralized computer system. To overcome the aforesaid problems of personal computers, the centralized computer system, i.e., so-called blade PC system, has been developed. As shown in FIG. 1, the centralized computer system 1 comprises a plurality of hosts 12, and each host 12 is equipped with and operated by a set of I/O peripherals 14. Each set of I/O peripherals 14 comprises at least one peripheral device. The hosts 12 in the centralized computer system are bladed, i.e., each host 12 is implemented into a “card”. In other words, each host 12 comprised on a circuit card comprises standard computer system components. As shown in FIG. 1, each set of I/O peripherals 14 comprises a display 142, a keyboard 144, a mouse 146, and/or other peripheral devices for human interface. The centralized computer system 1 is capable of communicating with the I/O peripherals 14 by transmitting and receiving encoded I/O signals via the network. The I/O peripherals 14 correspond to the hosts 12.
In general, a large blade PCs (hosts) and I/O peripherals are required in enterprises. Relatively, the functions of management in these devices are much more complex and variable than those in general network devices, such as authentication, privilege, broadcast setting of video conference/video education, setting of voice over internet protocol (VoIP), installation of blade PC operating system, firmware updating of embedded system, and the like. Therefore, service manager not only has to search for all usable devices existing in the business network but also should be capable of detecting the current status of each device at any time, such as plug in-out, busy/idle, and the like. In the prior art, search tools can be classified as follows.                (1) Broadcast package: all devices in the net segment can receive the broadcast package from the service manager. However, this kind of package would be blocked by router and incapable of crossing over the net segment. The broadcast package is only suitable for a small network.        (2) Scanning: for the IP addresses in all net segments of the network, ping-pong scanning is performed regularly. This manner consumes more time, such that data cannot be transmitted in time and the server will suffer a heavy burden.        
Therefore, the scope of the invention is to provide a centralized computer system and the status detecting method for automatically detecting the current status of the hosts and/or the I/O peripherals.